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The long awaited Witcher 3 was just released. This third and final installment introduces open world gameplay, and though some aspects of the game have been streamlined, there’s still a lot to learn as you’re playing. Here are a few tips I’ve learned as I’ve been playing. I’ve played on normal, on XB1. This post is spoiler free.

General

The Bestiary is important. Unlike most games, it doesn’t just give history but actual useful information. Before fighting monsters, check the bestiary for its weaknesses to certain items, bombs, or signs.

When you pick up books, make sure to give them a read before you ditch them, they may add something to your Bestiary.

Meditate. You can do it pretty much anywhere out of combat. It will refill your health (on most difficulties), and restock your potions.

You can usually find armor and weapon enhancers in towns or outposts, use them when you see them for a temporary upgrade.

If you’re short on money, keep an eye out for treasures and caches on the map.

If you come across a monster nest you need to destroy, walk up to it and you should get a button prompt. Don’t just toss bombs at it.

Travel

You can fast travel at signposts, but do it too often and you’ll risk missing things out in the world.

If you’re mounted you can hold down A and your horse will follow the path without having to be steered.

You can fight while mounted.

Items

Pick up everything (but don’t spend hours picking flowers, unless that’s what you’re into). The inventory UI isn’t great, but you can generally use items to craft things, or disassemble them into crafting mats.

You only need to make things like potions once. After this, they are replenished during meditation using alcohol.

An item called Potion of Clearance will let you reassign your skill points, but costs 1000g. The first place I found one of these was Keira’s hut.

Repair your equipment when you can, but don’t waste money repairing the junk you plan to sell or disassemble. Repair kits are also sold and come in handy in dungeons.

Leveling and Quests

In this game, you have to ‘equip’ skills, and in the beginning you only get 3. So it’s best to pick a couple favourite abilities (I like to focus on fast attacks and Igni) and put many points into them rather than spreading them out over many abilities.

Equip a mutagen that will buff your most important equipped skills (they’ll be the same colour).

Do all the available side quests before you face your first big enemy. Experience and gold were a bit hard to come by at the start of the game.

Check the bounty board in each new town.

Secondary quests can vary wildly in level. Make sure you check the level of the quest before tackling it, you generally want to be within 2 levels of it.

Combat

This is the first Witcher game where you have a ranged weapon, so don’t forget about it. While it doesnt do a lot against armored enemies, it’s good when things are out of range or in the air.

Dodge a lot. Parry enemies with swords. Attack from the back.

You’ll sometimes have a companion with you in combat – let them serve as a distraction so you can attack from the back.

It’s been great to see so many strong isometric RPGs come out in the last year or two, with more still to come. Pillars of Eternity was released at the end of March by Obsidian and it’s been great so far, and really brings up the nostalgia for games like Baldur’s Gate 2 or Planescape: Torment, while adding some cool new features and story.

Here are a few tips if you’re just getting started.

Combat

The real-time combat took a bit to get used to for me, here are some of the things I learned:

Micromanage the hell out of your party. Even on lower difficultly levels, you can’t usually just let everyone auto-attack and still win.

Combat can be over quickly, and your characters can be killed in a matter of seconds if you’re not careful. Be aggressive – use your abilities proactively, don’t save them for a time you think they may be more needed. If you’re up against a group of enemies, reducing their numbers quickly is key.

Use the custom formations to put your party members in good initial positions (heartier melee in the front, ranged and casters in the back).

Make sure your squishy ranged are actually equipped with ranged weapons (a quarterstaff will still have them running into melee range) so they stay in safe spots.

Buffs and crowd control are just as important as damage and healing. I particularly like abilities that knock down enemies, or the big AoE buffs from classes like Priests and Druids.

Read all your spells – some offensive spells will only hit enemies, but many have friendly fire as well.

Sometimes, you just aren’t strong enough to beat a particular enemy yet. Learned from experience – don’t try to take on Raedric at level 3.

Companions

Here’s the list of all 8 possible companions and where you can find them, so you don’t miss any:

Aloth (Wizard) – Gilded Vale

Eder (Warrior) – Gilded Vale

Durance (Priest) – Magran’s Fork

Kana (Chanter) – Caed Nua

Pallegina (Paladin) – Oondra’s Gift in Defiance Bay

Sagani (Ranger) – Woodend Plains

Hiravias (Druid) – Stormwall Gorge

Grieving Mother (Cipher) – Dyrfold Village

The pre-created companions will all add something to the story as well as have their own character quests.

There are 3 classes not represented by the pre-created characters – Barbarian, Monk, and Rogue – in case that impacts the creation of your own character.

You can also make your own companions from an Inn.

You’ll level up faster if you don’t have the party of 6, as each character will get more experience.

Items

Rope and Grappling Hook, Hammer & Chisel, and Lockpicks are very useful, especially at the start of the game. If you get a chance to buy or pick these up, do it. There are in-game events which will need them if your skill levels aren’t very high yet.

Always carry the max amount of Camping Supplies (4).

Crafting

You don’t need to worry about recipes in the game, they’ll open up as you reach the appropriate levels.

You can cook or do alchemy, to get foods and potions which will provide buffs. You can make scrolls, though I haven’t found those are needed much, or traps.

Enchanting has been the most useful type of crafting for me. If you get a good, named piece of equipment, enchant it to make it even better.

Don’t worry too much about saving materials for later, most things can be found again or bought easily.

Exploring

Make extensive use of the Tab button, which will highlight items you can pick up or interact with, and Scouting mode, which will reveal traps and hidden items.

If Scouting mode is too slow for your tastes, pair it with Double Speed.

The initial scrolling speed for the game is slow, it can be increased in the menu under Game.

Rest often. It doesn’t seem that rest can be interrupted by monsters.

Visit Caed Nua early, because it opens up some cool new stuff.

You can’t get to Twin Elms until Act 3, don’t drive yourself nuts trying to figure out how to get there.

It matters what exit you take from some screens. Exiting from the East won’t open up access to an area South of you.

That’s all for now! Let me know if you need more info, or if you have any tips for me.

Okay, that sounded much more sinister that it should have. Larisa and Syl came up with the excellent idea of creating a blogger community map to show were around the world bloggers are writing from. I think it’ll be neat to see how many different locations are represented and possibly even discover bloggers nearby.

If you are a blogger and want to get on the map, go visit this post and leave a comment (or sent an email/tweet) with your information.